bah! you young people and your tech savvy ability to do things like keep a blog organized. this blog is virtual chaos! why can't i figure out how to order my blogs date-appropriately? why can't i figure out how to make my blog private? maybe i wanna get my doogie howser on, ya know?

i had some strange hallucinations the last few hours. that hazy semi-conscious sleep where everything felt so vivid i panicked when i started coming out of it because i hadn't learned everything i wanted. my coming consciousness was compromising the revelations. i was getting extreme details and when i woke up, i believed they were real. trip on.

but what i want to know is why is love described as an article of violence? because it annihilates people or because it explodes in your face? because it's something so big and profound that when it hits it causes catastrophic devastation?

fucking L bomb.

isn't it supposed to be selfless? isn't it supposed to be something that is given without the necessity of reciprocation? shouldn't it be one of the best things which could possibly detonate in your vicinity? ('love terrorism.' haha) i guess not, because people are scared shitless from a possible terrorist attack.

pride. you bastard.

i'm a little nervous about flying. more than a little nervous. to where i say a prayer to the plane and mad dog the pilot as i board like, 'yeah, i got you.' in short, jets freak me out.

if i were in bob's cessna, oh, we'd have us some turbulence, but you can successfully stall a cessna's engine and COAST safely to the ground. how do i know? i've logged the hours.

they don't plummet to the earth and that, my friends, is because they are built for LIFT. they are built on the faith of bernoulli's principle. jets are a whole different animal. they are man's arrogant assertion that they can manipulate this principle with power. and so, when a commercial jet loses power, you're fucked. the wings are stubby, hence the necessity for jet engines. you need to pull a lot of air over those bitty wings to keep an aircraft that big in the sky. so what happens when one of those engines goes out? exactly.

but it's cute that they print all of those little brochures for the 'what to do if you make it' scenario. at least hope floats.

i'm in buenos aires. and intact. this can only mean that my flight went ok. praise be to jesus. but american airlines gets a 'b' for their landing skills. they made b-grade for the fact that we didn't crash and DIE, but they received negatory marks for not knowing how to land a plane properly. let me handle it, man. i'm sure i can land a 777. it's exactly the same as a single engine cessna, right? no? oh, okay.

the pilot didn't have control of the plane and the corollary to that is that i did not have control of my stomach as it dropped and slid towards the first class cabin. it was some scary shit. how are you going to be less than a thousand feet in the air and feel like you're trying to flip this bitch on a 45 degree angle in either direction? minor corrections, man. it was muy scary and i prayed for my exclusive safety because, let's face it, the odds are better for you if you're specific. i learned that in 'prayer statistics' and 'god econometrics' with an emphasis on 'jesus-centered marginal utility'. facts are facts.

i ventured around for a while until i found the recoleta cemetary. the sky was overcast, the earth somber. i wandered around it's deserted cobblestone walkways, the crypts and sepulchres looking more like storefronts and houses than what they were. the vibe was eerie and overwhelming. these are the people who preceeded us on the path. i was walking through a city of dead. there was not another living soul to be seen except for half-dozen dirty cats. they added an element of the occult and, had it been night, i would have been disturbed. but, as it was afternoon, they continued to groom themselves and survey the visitors with indifference from the feet of concrete angels.

i was awed by the sheer magnificence of the architecture but at the same time it seemed so vain; another futile attempt at living forever by men who want to display their power and influence beyond the grave.

i have been up since 4 a.m. i'm tired. today is done.

maybe not the rape, murder and cultural genocide, but, ya know, the architecture's nice.

colonia is uruguay's redemption. after my anti-american reception (and it's not like i busted out the star spangled banner, i just threw money at 'em and said, 'i own you'. just kidding.) colonia is refreshing. and beautiful. it's not tropical, exotic, or even breathtaking. it's mellow and i can feel the waves slowly pulling the fear from my body in every soft lap. it's beautiful in an 'i could stand here all day and just breathe' way. and i did.

colonia was colonized by the portuguese (see that? 'colonia' and 'colonized' you connect the dots so well! i'm proud of you). the cobblestone streets lined with these worn rock buildings look like a european fairytale rather than a town in south america. ancient empire. these people came onto the native shores and erected their world in a 'new' world. it's pretty bad ass.

you know what's also bad ass? my room with a balcony in the oldest hotel in colonia has a skeleton key to open the door. that is SO 19th century!

i roll into montevideo and there are fucking slums on either side of the street that look like a u.s. ghetto threw up and died here. the bus kept stopping and i wasn't sure where its final stop was so i was nervous about when to get off. each place looked like it could beat the crap out of me harder than the last. everytime the air brakes popped i thought 'please, GOD, don't make me get out here!'

on top of my apparent white affluence, i get to be AMERICAN and enjoy the local youth's hostile graffiti tributes to us such as, 'u.s. colonialists out of iraq' and 'don't (associate) with yankees'

i'm going to be instant friends with everyone, i can already tell.

the only thing missing from my horseback ride through the andes was the marlboro man. the landscape was intense! it looked like the wild west collided with antarctica. it looked like every scene ruggedly portrayed behind an even more rugged and burly cowboy in a cigarette ad.

it was perfect.

border-hopped into argentina to view the vast expanse that is the perito moreno glacier. pictures cannot do this colossal river of ice justice. it is MAMMOTH. its peaks of frosty white and pale arctic blue cracked, moaned and tumbled into the water with such force and fury it could wake misplaced gods from slumber. fragments splintered and fell but the massive entity remained; it descends from the far away mountains and the glacier sits so high that it becomes indistinguishable from the clouds that haunt the lull between a sharply defined mountain range. this is nature in its most confrontationally unwaivering and harsh form, challenging man's greatness with its own, as it wraps around and covers mountains for what seems like miles.

the wind has distorted the trees so that they writhe near the ground and everything is yellow, brown, and green shades of the most basic colors of the earth. this place is harsh and barren. this place isn't beautiful immediately. actually, it's almost bleak. the spring lures little green grasses out of hibernation and maybe some flowers might be bold enough to proclaim their existences but patagonia remains brutal.

on the last leg of the four day trek the wind attempted to twist me to the ground along with the trees and shrubs and i looked around me and looked at patagonia and thought of pablo. his poem was about love but i found it's meaning here:

i love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

that is patagonia.

oh goodness!

you know what makes me really feel alive?

breathing.

the cost of a room in oruro during carnival is more than i can afford to

pay--like 150 US DOLLARS for three nights at the same place that is

charging me 5 bucks a night pre-carnival. so this means that i'm outta here

tomorrow. i am headed to uyuni where a smaller, and cheaper carnival awaits

me. these people know what capitalism means, that's for sure.

so i'll be in bolivia until the beginning of march, i think. then i'll go

to humahuaca (OOmaWAkah), argentina, to see some mountainy scenery and then

back to salta where i might fly to bariloche because i'm getting so sick of

being on buses with no bathrooms or smelly bathrooms with no water or

toilet paper with frequent stops and way-side vendors pacing up the aisles

everytime the bus stops wailing 'chipa! chipa!' or 'refresco,

gaseosas'...drives me nuts.

a few of you already know, and for those this is a repeat, but as strong as

i like to think that i am, i totally have altitude sickness. it happened on

the way up from salta. i could feel my heart beginning to race in la quiaca

(it's 3500 meters above sea level or something like it). i chewed on some

coca which made me feel a little better but by the time i got to potosi

(which, according to 'rough guide' is the highest city in the world at 4000

something meters above sea level) everything was aching. my jaws and teeth

to my elbow joints and chest ached, breathing in deeply hurt, and my heart

began palpitating...not so much fun. i tried not moving but i still ached

and felt nauseous. i didn't want to get up to look for my excedrin because

i knew it would start the aching all over again, but i eventually did and

was finally able to fall asleep. today is a lot better but any steep

inclines are a no go and i dread walking up the miniscule flight of stairs

to my room because i know it'll put my heart into overdrive.

bolivia is really beautiful, though. there are specks of huts (literally

huts) few and far between on the mountains and little valleys. cows are

tied to posts rather than in pasture and there are crude stone walls around

corn and goats. there are llama running around near the side of the road

and the babies are so cute and fluffy! but yeah, if anyone's interested in

trying out their own manifest destiny and westward expansion, bolivia's the

place to do it. there's nothing but open space and it's very primitive (in

the country..which is everywhere there isn't a city). you'd really be

roughing it like on the frontier.

i walked across the border into bolivia. it was awesome. i've never walked

into another country before. i felt all...migrant.

ariel: kinda hot argentino who was good company on the bus to the border and even walked into villazon (bolivian border town) with me to continue keeping me company. he even gave me his little baggie of coca to chew on. and bought me grapes.

then! not only do i gain an hour because bolivia is one hour behind argentina during the summer, i get a ticket for potosi (the highest city in the world according to rough guide) leaving the same day AND i don't have to wait around villazon all day.

what luck!

i was told horror stories about how the buses in bolivia are dangerous; they cram people into buses, drive kamikaze-like down shitty roads at lightning speed and drive without lights at night...

lucked out again!

i have my own reclining seat, the bus isn't crowded and the headlights are shining in the darkness (there's also some kind of electric/lightning storm happening right behind the hills which is, uh, amazing).

BOOYAKASHA.

we're blazing down the road like we're off roading (which we might technically have been doing because these are sorry excuses for roads) bouncing and jiving like crazy, but it's fun. exciting. what's an adventure without a little danger?

another bus passes us from the opposite direction and kicks up a cloud of dust in its wake. our chofer barrels right through the zero visibility with the courage of a champion. just as i'm thinking 'yeah, this feels safe..'

SLAM! we hit a truck head on. the bus made some unimpressive 'thud' but the front end of the truck was in bits. no one was hurt but now we're stopped, lights out, stranded in the bolivian darkness.

after about 20 minutes of sitting in a pitch black bus waiting to be hit from behind from another bus that doesn't see us (because the lights are off) and listening to the clucking of spanish and quechua women, i got off the bus and with my cell phone, navigated my way to an unoccupied space...and waited.

the sky was amazing. i have never seen so many stars so close. i could even see the celestial dust (or whatever the fuck it's called) and i'm pretty sure if i had the ability to identify constellations, i would have been able to name them all. phenomenal. this doesn't change the fact that later on i will have to squat behind a SPARCE nearly naked bush and get semi-naked myself to make a pee pee 30 feet from dozens of people. stage fright? you betcha. but after some of the other more disgusting/embarrassing bathroom debacles which are guaranteed here, this doesn't really phase me (i just try not to pee on my shoes...too much).

bolivia. you need to develop your sewer/waste management systems. this is killing me (and making me feel disgusting).

san ignacio (the mission):a long-deserted jesuit mission (reduccion) which has since sprouted a town

(san ignacio) that serves as a gateway to the mission ruins.

ruins....there's something awe-inspiring about weathered stone and tumbled

walls that i wandered through the maze of this massive effort at religious

conversion with the hair of my arms on end.

the priests were finally expelled from the region in 1768 and the mission

was rediscovered in 1897. a huge orange-red sandstone church facade is the

only piece of the mission grounds which is fairly intact. the tile floors

of the rooms have been recovered but most of it was geometrically stacked

stones whose crevices made cozy little homes for little viney plants. how

great it would have been to play pretend with ardena in the mission

quarters covered by fig trees and distanced by grassy plains.

san ignacio (the town):

it's summer here and it feels every bit oppressive as summer heat typically

does. cloudless sky makes colors too intense to look at directly. the

greens of everything changed into a shiny white and the red clay road

burned. the saturation of the town was just enough to handle and, if i

shielded my eyes (having lost my fucking sunglasses somewhere in buenos

aires), the colors made the entire town look surreal.

the town felt as deserted as the mission; i could hear my feet tumble off

the rocks of the dirt road and the buzz of insects and electric currents.

time could have stopped. everything moved so slowly i probably didn't even

need to breathe, why would you, if time stands still?

the paraguayan consulate isn't open on sundays. big surprise. so i'm in

posadas for another day. 'let's, uh, make the best of it. i still have a

pass to the santa ana reduccion. let's check that out.'..'ok.' alright. i

have confirmed with myself that i'm going to santa ana for the day.

i was so smooth at mastering the transit system (it wasn't so much a

'mastery' as me being helped by all the friendly people here). but i got

where i needed to get and i'm starting to recognize actual words and sounds

of the spanish persuasion. this is also good.

the santa ana reduccion is about 1km away from the point of nowhere they

drop you off at but there's a huge billboard sign which points the way like

salvation. hot again today. SURPRISE. but no trees anywhere and the highway

'turns to water and then from water to sky.' goddamn 1km feels like forever

but, luckily, i get so hot that i'm completely soaked and that KINDA feels

nice. if there were a breeze.

these ruins sucked my ass. mainly because they looked like an abandoned

construction site. the cemetary was eerie, though. the sepulcres have iron

gates and i could see the coffins inside that had burst open. no skeletons

though. what happened to them?

on the way back, drinking all the no water i brought with me (which is to

say: dying of thirst), i felt like collapsing on the highway and clawing my

way to the makeshift bus stop. i was so hot and i felt stuck to the pavement

and i was moving but not going anywhere.

upon arriving at the terminal in posadas, i grossly overpaid for water and

then obscenely drank almost 2 liters of it. i didn't care. fuck all y'all.

you can look at me like a crazy foreigner all you want. bitch is HOT (and

thirsty).

it sounds like a nightmare of a day but i enjoyed myself immensely. enduring

not so great circumstances always makes me feel good (in an accomplished

kind of a way).

11:23pm; night before flight to d.c.

i'm gone on a plane

it's a brand new adventure

goodbye...and hello!

11:27pm; night before flight to d.c.

time time time goes by

the street light seizes again

keeping me awake

(and then i tapped a few more unintelligible haikus on my fingers and somehow sacked out.)

ok. calm down everyone. before, you knew i was going to ecuador. now, you know i have my staging kit. so, vague-ish knowledge of assignment in ecuador + staging kit = wherei'mgoingwherei'mstayingwhati'mdoingwhatthetemperatureiswhattobringwhattoexpectohyeahdon'tforgettokeeppracticingspanishbringallyourprescriptionscongratulationshopeyou'renotafraidofneedles!

kah-PLAH.

don't worry. i'm breaking it up into bite-sized pieces for easy and gentle rumination. safety first.

i have to be vaccinated. below: a brief listing with its own title.

a wonderful preliminary list of my potential vaccinations:

hep A and B

yellow fever

(maybe) MMR

rabies #1

rabies #1? is this the 'ultimate' in rabies? oh, dude, what's wrong with you? superrabies. ohh.

does this mean i'm on my own to die frothy-mouthed and crazy if i get rabies #2 or #3? man, all the stray dogs i've pet abroad...i'm lucky i didn't get the rabies numero uno. (see that? that's spanish. allow me to translate because my advanced foreign language skills can be intimidating: rabies #1.)

the end.

oh yeah: rabies.

i received my invitation kit almost a month ago. the kit that required an aspiration statement and updated resume, passport instructions, etc.

everyone i've explained the process to has decided for me that it's much too much paperwork. i haven't thought about it because i'm busy making lists to get it done. if anything, it's satisfying to make a list and prioritize what i need to get done, finish it, and then cross off the task in a different colored pen to confirm the accomplishment. god, i love lists. lists are wonderful. (deep nostalgic sigh while i recollect the last time i made a list).

i knocked out the aspiration statement and resume right before deadline. i have my pictures for my new passport, along with a completed application, letters, etc. but maybe the process is getting to me because i can't set myself to task to type on a piece of paper "ashley talley, farm management, ecuador 2008" and make a photocopy of my damaged passport to attach to the passport application to finally mail it off. mundane details -ahhhhhhH!

enough. tomorrow it's getting done. i'm finishing it all tomorrow. tomorrow, i'll wash my hands of you, invitation kit! and i'll use an aqua-colored sharpie pen to zip my victory line across the task of 'complete invitation kit', maybe magenta if i'm feeling sassy.

preparation for the job, for the journey, is going well. i have started going to a spanish conversation group at the free school downtown. it would be more beneficial if we had more fluent speakers choppin it up with us, but at least it puts me out there, speaking and thinking about how to speak. currently reading about farm management and feasibility studies. i scored a cost analysis of orchards or something (i haven't gotten into it yet) but case studies like that should help because they're real versus theoretical principles. maybe it'll be detailed enough that i can follow along and do my own analysis (fingers crossed)!two other goals:speak with/read blogs of returned/current farm management volunteers.study up on the cultural and economic history of ecuador, along with all the useful facts like what the capital is (quito) and the name of the current president (palacio?).finding farm management blogs has been difficult. where are you people? another option is to attend a peace corps event in my area (reminder to self: put this on the list).

the end.

p.s. who are you, gabriela, and how would i contact you?

i guess i really like pretending i'm a secret agent or that i am about to win an academy award...i just don't know where the titles for these blogs come from...i'll try to be more creative at some point in time...today? notsomuch.

i received notice through the peace corps site that my invitation packet is on its way! so that everyone is on the same page i'd like you all to lick your index fingers and place them on the mental page we're all about to turn so it's synchronized: i'm really going. this is PC telling me where and when!

every day since then, of course, i've developed a routine where i go to the mailbox, hold my breath until i determine whether it looks full or not and then open it like charlie opening his chocolate bar with the hope and then palpable disappointment of finding it does NOT contain a golden ticket.

yesterday i did the same thing i did friday and the thursday before that: i went to the mailbox and decided 'not'...and i was right. it was o-so-empty save for two netflix dvds which i would find out were craptacular no more than 2 full hours later.

oh well, i got my computer back from dell that same day (after they fixed some problems) which meant i could at least watch those dvds and take my mind off my empty mailbox. with that awkward bundle i went up to my apartment where BAM! the mailperson had left my invitation on my door step!

seriously?! seriously? you already know i tore through the packet and stared and stared until i could read english again. it said.....ECUADOR. i'm going to ecuador. in february. working in farm management/agribusiness. seriously?! seriously.

now you know. and i know. we all know. it's a good feeling. almost omniscient, except that i have almost no clue what to expect. so really, nothing like omniscient. but at least we know.

ECUADOR.

Me!

I am 'ready to be nominated' for a Peace Corps program. Are you SERIOUS? Of all the interviews I've EVER had, the interview for PC was awful. I wouldn't have wanted me. But I'm in! and I have potential.

Now to get reading and coordinate more extensive farm time...

Oh, 'Where are you going', you ask?

I don't really know. I am being nominated for an agricultural extension program in Central or South America leaving in January or February 2008. I'll keep you posted.

For now, this will be the place that will update you on me and my PC aspirations.